| | | Kirby Puckett and Dave Winfield, each of whom was elected to the Hall of Fame by the baseball writers in January, should be prepared for some good-natured joshing come induction day, regarding which of them had the more important World Series hit.
|  | | The image of Bill Mazeroski circling the bases after homering to win Game 7 of the 1960 World Series is one of baseball's most indelible memories. |
Puckett's 11th-inning home run off Atlanta's Charlie Leibrandt gave the Twins a 4-3 victory in Game 6 of the 1991 Series, forcing a Game 7. The next night, Jack Morris's 10-inning shutout and Gene Larkin's pinch-hit single gave Minnesota the championship.
In Game 6 the next year, Winfield's two-out, two-run double, also in the 11th inning and also off Atlanta's Leibrandt, broke a 2-2 tie and provided the winning margin in the Blue Jays' 4-3 Series-clinching win.
As big as those hits were, however, in the category of dramatic World Series hits by Hall-of-Fame inductees, Puckett and Winfield just got trumped.
The Veterans Committee on Tuesday elected Bill Mazeroski and former Negro Leaguer Hilton Smith to be immortalized in Cooperstown, and
wherever the debate about the most dramatic World Series hits begins, it ends with Maz. His Game 7, ninth-inning, 1960 Series-winning home run off Ralph Terry (Charlie Leibrandt was only 4 years old at the time) is one of only two Series-ending homers in the history of the event; the other, by Toronto's Joe Carter in 1993, came
in a Game 6, not a Game 7.
It's ironic, of course. Mazeroski was likely the best-fielding second baseman in the game's history, with eight Gold Gloves, a record nine seasons leading his league in assists, and a record eight years (all in succession) leading in double plays.
But he is best knownfor that home run, which he belted over the distant left field wallat Pittsburgh's Forbes Field, a notoriously difficult park in which to hit home runs (it was 365 feet to the left-field corner).
Playing his entire 17-year career with the Pirates (14½ of those seasons at Forbes, before the team moved into Three Rivers Stadium in 1970), Mazeroski hit only 45 of his 138 regular-season homers in home games.
In fact, among all of the players who hit as many big-league homers as Maz during the last century, only two hit a greater percentage of their homers on the road: Eddie Yost (who played most of his home games in Washington's cavernous Griffith Stadium -- 405 to the left-field corner for some of those years) and Elston Howard (a right-handed hitter in "old" Yankee Stadium -- 402 and then 457 to the left-center power alley). Given a fairer home run park, Maz would have finished with close to 200 career homers.
Mazeroski and Winfield -- and yes, Luis Sojo, too -- belong to a select group of 16 players who drove in the game-winning run of a World Series in the ninth inning or extra innings of the Series-clinching game.
That's something that we have grown used to in recent years: five of the last nine Series-winning RBIs have come in the ninth inning or later of the final game (Larkin, Winfield, Carter, Edgar Renteria in the 11th inning in 1997, and Sojo).
But historically, it's rather rare. Besides Maz and Winfield, only five players who did it have been elected to the Hall of Fame: Harry Hooper (1915 Red Sox), Mel Ott (1933 Giants), Goose Goslin (1935 Tigers), Joe DiMaggio (1939 Yankees) and Joe Morgan (1975 Reds). Morgan and Maz, the two great second basemen, are now the only players among those Hall of Famers who knocked in the Series-winning run in the ninth inning or later of a Game 7.
Mazeroski joins Roberto Clemente as the only members of the Pirates' 1960 championship team enshrined in the Hall of Fame, and he is the first player who spent at least the majority of his big-league career with the Bucs to be selected to the Hall since Willie Stargell was chosen in 1988. With a new ballpark in place and Maz going to
Cooperstown, there should be some smiles on the faces of Pittsburghers this morning.
Steve Hirdt is the executive vice president of the Elias Sports Bureau.
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